Are adjudicated juvenile offenders ever committed to public detention centers?

A:

Although public detention centers are typically used to hold youth awaiting court hearings or placement elsewhere, some states also use them as placements for adjudicated offenders. Analyses of the 2011 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP), found that detention centers in 29 states reported that there were at least 10 adjudicated juvenile offenders committed to their facility on the census date.

Committed Offenders in Public Detention Facilities, 2011

State of Facility

Yes*

No

Number of states

29

18

Alabama

X

Alaska

X

Arizona

X

Arkansas

X

California

X

Colorado

X

Connecticut

X

Delaware

X

District of Columbia

X

Florida

X

Georgia

X

Hawaii

X

Idaho

X

Illinois

X

Indiana

X

Iowa

X

Kansas

X

Kentucky

X

Louisiana

X

Maine**

Maryland

X

Massachusetts

X

Michigan

X

Minnesota

X

Mississippi

X

Missouri

X

Montana

X

Nebraska

X

Nevada

X

New Hampshire

X

New Jersey

X

New Mexico

X

New York

X

North Carolina

X

North Dakota

X

Ohio

X

Oklahoma

X

Oregon

X

Pennsylvania

X

Rhode Island**

South Carolina

X

South Dakota

X

Tennessee

X

Texas

X

Utah

X

Vermont**

Virginia

X

Washington

X

West Virginia

X

Wisconsin

X

Wyoming**

*States that are not included in the 29 may in practice commit adjudicated youth to detention centers; however, this was not reported on the 2011 CJRP.
**No public detention centers reported to the 2011 CJRP in Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont or Wyoming.
"State of Facility" refers to the location of the facility in which the juvenile is being held.

The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP), which is conducted biennially, asks all juvenile residential facilities in the U.S. to describe each youth younger than 21 accused or adjudicated of one or more delinquency or status offenses and assigned a bed in the facility on a specific day. The CJRP does not include federal facilities or those exclusively for drug or mental health treatment or for abused/neglected youth.

The CJRP provides one-day population counts of juvenile offenders in juvenile residential placement facilities. Such one-day counts provide a picture of the standing population in facilities. One-day counts are substantially different from annual admission and release data, which provide a measure of facility population flow.

Developed for the State Training and Technical Assistance Center by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ), with funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The following NCJJ staff contributed to this state profile: Teri Deal, Anne Fromknecht, Sarah Hockenberry, and Lauren Vessels.